The Pearl Diver (4 page)

All around her, on this first night of her isolation, bodies. Some are already spotted like that of the older woman earlier in the day. Others worse than that. Some with faces, limbs already contorted. Several are like her—no visible sign until they are naked. She doesn’t use the blanket, not sure who wrapped themselves in it the night before. She curls up within herself, but it is cold. Not as cold as the doctor’s gloves. Never that cold again. She covers her face with her hands to block out some of the disinfectant’s stench, but her hands stink of it, everybody does, this room does, this building, this island. For the first time in years, she doesn’t smell the sea on her skin.

She tries thinking of a name. It doesn’t sound all that difficult to do. Pick a name. When she was little, she often had make-believe names when playing. It was easy. She never thought of it before now, but we are lucky, for the burden of choosing a name is put on the parents, not us. But now she is both the parent and the newborn. And not only a first name, a family name, as well.

The woman next to her can’t sleep, either; she’s been moving around all night. She asks the woman’s name. The woman mumbles something that she doesn’t understand. Maybe she is asleep, she thinks. She asks again. Again, she doesn’t understand. A man, a couple of mats away, speaks.

“Mang. Her name is Mang. She doesn’t speak much Japanese.”

“Doesn’t speak Japanese?”

“She’s Korean.”

She doesn’t know what to say. What’s a Korean doing here? The man breaks the silence.

“My name is Shikagawa. Why do you want to know everybody’s name?”

“Because they said I must choose one.”

“That’s not easy. You have to think of something happy in your life. Make a name from that.”

“We’re not supposed to think of our past.”

“That’s only what they say. They know that’s impossible, but what else are they to tell us?”

“Why did you choose Shikagawa?”

“When I was a child, I used to see a deer drinking from the river near my family’s home. So I chose Shikagawa— deer drinking from the river.”

“That’s beautiful.”

“At least something I have is. That’s why it’s so important for you to give this some real thought. I will be quiet now. Good night. I’ll ask you your name in the morning.”

There is a single dream that she has in this first week. Maybe she has so few dreams because she sleeps so little. It is the same dream over and over, very short but exactly as the previous one.
The man who rowed her here has arrived back at Shodo Island and he has dragged his boat ashore. And although it is late December, he removes the fingerless gloves from his hands, then his hat, jacket, shirts, socks, pants, underwear, and throws them all in the boat. He empties a container of kerosene over it, tosses a match. Everything is in black and white. Even the flames. The man doesn’t stand there to get warmed by the fire, but runs away naked, and she is here on this shore, watching him through the flames until she sees him no more.

the artifacts of nagashima

Every artifact has a dozen stories—a thousand.

ARTIFACT Number 0012
The money of Nagashima

The Coins:

One Sen: oval-shaped. The front: black, trimmed in gold, a hole in the middle, the amount, along with the
kanji
for Nagashima Leprosarium. The back: plain bronze, no design.

Five Sen: round-shaped. The front: black, trimmed in gold, a hole in the middle, the amount, along with the
kanji
for Nagashima Leprosarium. The back: plain bronze, no design.

Ten Sen: round-shaped, a little larger than the five-sen coin. The front: black, trimmed in gold, a square hole in the middle, the amount, along with the
kanji
for Nagashima Leprosarium. The back: plain bronze, no design.

Fifty Sen: round-shaped, a little larger than the ten-sen coin.
The front: black, trimmed in gold, no hole in the middle, the amount, along with the
kanji
for Nagashima Leprosarium.
The back: plain bronze, no design.

One Hundred Sen: oval-shaped, the largest of all the coins. The front: gold, trimmed in black, no hole in the middle, the amount, along with the
kanji
for Nagashima Leprosarium, a handheld fan design on the bottom. The back: plain gold, no design.

The Paper Money:

One Yen: rectangular-shaped. The front: plain white, with black ink. The date handwritten down the left side, the
kanji
for Nagashima Leprosarium printed from right to left across the bottom, the amount in the middle. The back: plain white.

Five Yen: rectangular-shaped, a little larger than the one-yen bill. The front: plain white, with black ink. The date handwritten down the left side, the
kanji
for Nagashima Leprosarium printed from right to left across the bottom, the amount in the middle, to the right side of which is a drawing of a small sunrise over an island, the thin beams of the sun stretching far; to the left side of the amount, a picture of pampas grass bending in the wind. The back: plain white.

And on the seventh day of the first week, the final week of 1948, she, like all of the new patients, receives her money.

ARTIFACT Number 0022

Those who arrived in 1948

a third-year university engineering student
four fishermen
two mothers
a boy who just completed seventh grade
a tanka poet
three World War II veterans and a
twenty-year-old kamikaze who lived
a young woman two weeks from her marriage
a mah-jongg gambler
five high school girls and boys
a twenty-six-year-old man who worked in the ship-yards
a semiprofessional baseball player
three schoolteachers—two women and a
man who was a high school band director
a Buddhist priest
three Christians
a fish market auctioneer
two government office workers and a policeman
five Koreans—a woman and four men
a sushi shop owner
two members of the Communist party
two coal miners
a train conductor
three nurses
seven farmers
two construction workers
one law student
and a pearl diver

ARTIFACT Number 0196
A rusty farm sickle

She sees the man with the sickle in his right hand, but she sees the same thing many times each day.
The patients, who are healthy enough, do everything here: gardening, fishing, nursing, teaching, constructing buildings. They are both patient and staff. So, yes, she sees him, but he doesn’t strike her as doing anything unusual or suspicious. Just walking by with a small sickle in his hand. Many people carrying or pushing all kinds of things: sickles, rakes, shovels, hand plows, wheelbarrows.

He is not much older than she, maybe twenty-five, no more than thirty. She does know that he’s a newer patient and that, like her, he has almost no physical signs of his disease. He goes around without a shirt, not a mark on his torso, only the large red spot on his left hand. A spot that stands out even more because of how suntanned he is.

She is up on the hill in Building A-15, giving Mr. Mimura’s legs a massage, when she hears screaming down near the sea, where most of the gardening is done. She goes to the window, doesn’t see anything, but continues to hear the commotion.

“I’ll be right back, Mr. Mimura.”

“Take me with you.”

“I’ll only be a minute. I want to see what the screaming is about, that’s all.”

“Take me.”

She picks Mr. Mimura up from the bed—he’s like a bony bird, weighing not much more than her cedar tub filled with a day’s catch—places him in a wheelbarrow. Mr. Mimura’s been here since 1933, fifteen years before she arrived. He is in his mid-fifties, one of the oldest patients. She takes him outside and sees a large group of people running up the hill, carrying someone. She hurries toward them, nearly spilling Mr. Mimura out of the wheelbarrow. They rush on past and she follows them to the hospital. The man is bleeding profusely from his left arm, but it is all the mud mixed with the blood that keeps her attention. A muddy, bloody trail all the way up the path leading from the sea.

It isn’t even fifteen minutes before the doctor comes out and says that the man has died, lost too much blood. The doctor tells several patients to carry the body over to the crematorium and dispose of it.

She pushes Mr. Mimura back to the shed, but his gnarled hand punches at her arm.

“Go down to the beach.”

“Not today, Mr. Mimura. I have many things to do.”

“Down to the gardens. Now.”

Mr. Mimura is always polite and calm, and the only reason that she takes him down to the gardens is because his demanding tone is so out of character. It’s only up a little hill and down another, and it isn’t that hot, the end of April. There are a few people working in the gardens, and Mr. Mimura points for her to go off to the right, to the gardens closest to the beach.

“Help me out of here.”

She lifts him out of the wheelbarrow, helps him on those bird-thin legs over to where the potatoes are planted. Beside a large rock is a bloody sickle—like the sickle she saw the man with this morning—dried maroon by the sun. On the rock is the man’s left hand, the large red spot still on the back of it. She stares at the mountain that sits at the far end of the peninsula.

“Help me back to the wheelbarrow.”

She supports Mr. Mimura, lifts and sits him in the wheelbarrow, pushes him all the way up the hill, back down the other, past the shed and all the way around the small inlet to the other side of Nagashima.

They still haven’t begun to cremate the man. Mr. Mimura, with her help, walks over to the naked body. She looks. Several scars on his right shoulder, scars whose history none of them in this room will ever know. She turns her head away, but when Mr. Mimura places the severed left hand on top of the man’s chest, she looks again, and they all stand there waiting for his body to be slid into the furnace.

ARTIFACT Number 0151
A photo of Health Minister Tsujino and
the thirteen heads of the nation’s leprosaria
Tokyo, Japan, June 25, 1949

Sitting around the oval-shaped table, a thicket of suits. Clockwise: Dr. Nishi, Dr. Yoshimura, Dr. Etoh, Dr. Barayama, Dr. Nomura, Dr. Ishihashi, Dr. Oishi, Dr. Nakamori, Dr. Saitoh, Dr. Wakabayashi, Dr. Yamashita, Dr. Fujita, Dr. Ikuta. At the head of the table, Dr. Tsujino, director of the Ministry of Health.

Cigarette smoke already pushed to the ceiling settles back down near their heads. Health Minister Tsujino has to squint through the fog in order to see the other thirteen men in the room. He gives a deep bow toward the top of the table before speaking, nearly touching his teacup with his head.

“With the development of the Promin drug, and its very positive results in stopping the progression of the disease, we can now cope with the future. We must begin thinking about releasing some of the patients. At least the ones who have recently been admitted.”

A hush hovers. Minister Tsujino waits, takes a couple of sips from his now-tepid green tea, then waits some more before giving another bow and speaking again.

“This drug is what we have been searching for—for a long time. A chance to get rid of this disease. Conditions now are considerably different from what they were forty years ago, when we had to quarantine the patients. Considerably different from even a year ago. It may be time to change the Leprosy Prevention Law. Each one of you should begin immediately compiling a list of your most recent patients, starting with those admitted since the beginning of 1946, and also those who have only mild cases of the disease.
With them, at least many of the physical scars aren’t so noticeable. They should be able to be reintroduced into society. If not their own communities, then at least some other place.”

Again, when he stops talking, there is nothing but silence. It is shattered this time, shortly after he stops.

“We can’t subject the citizens of this nation to these people. Imagine the panic that would spread. It would be a calamity,” says Dr. Nishi.

“But if we release only those whose disease hasn’t progressed, treat them with the drug as outpatients. Other countries have started implementing this policy. We have nearly seventeen thousand patients in our facilities. If we can release even forty, fifty percent of them in the near future, think of all the money that could be saved. Some of the smaller facilities could even be shut down; the remaining patients at those facilities could be transferred to the larger ones. Up here. Down in Nagashima, Kagoshima, Kumamoto.”

“You’re not thinking of the greater good of the people. Our own Dr. Mitsuda’s theory, back in 1931, clearly states that these people should be isolated from society. States that clearly. His theory is internationally known.”

“All due respect to Dr. Mitsuda, whom I have known for many years now, back to the days when he was director at Nagashima, and I have much admiration for him, but his theory of isolating patients was before the introduction of Promin. This drug changes that. The theory, as correct as it was at the time, ceases to apply today.”

“We have been using this drug for less than two years. We can’t go releasing them into society. Have you seen some of these people? They would be ridiculed for the rest of their lives. And what about them going and getting married and having children?”

“Yes, of course I’ve seen them, Dr. Nishi. That’s why we should slowly release them. The best patients first. Some of them have almost no physical signs of the disease. As for them starting families, we have the Eugenics Law enacted last year; that can deal with the problem before we release them.”

“Whom do they go to? Their families have disowned them. Their names have essentially been eliminated from the registers. They’ve had no contact with society.”

“But if we have the disease stopped and it doesn’t get any worse, maybe their families will reconsider. I’m talking about the lowest-risk patients. Treated as outpatients. Besides, it is our duty to educate the public.”

The quiet crashes back into the room; the electric fans blow it around, dispersing it all over and back again.

“What do the others in this room think about this?” asks Minister Tsujino.

There is no response; the rotating of the fans click, click. A few of the men pat the gathering sweat on their faces, let out stifled sighs, pat the backs of their necks, sweat impeding their white collars.

“How about a show of hands for all of those in favor of releasing patients back into the public?”

Although, because of the smoke, it is difficult to see the people farthest from him, Minister Tsujino knows he doesn’t have to see, for not a hand is lifted from the wood of the oval table.

ARTIFACT Numbers 0147 and 0272
A red stone with a black swath running
through it; a worn one-yen coin.

From the rocks at the bottom of the cliff, she stares at the bleeding wound of the morning horizon.
The tide backtracks, leaving only small puddles in the crevices of the rocks she sits on.

She knows of twenty-three patients who struck these rocks, their final breaths taken on them. What was the last thing that they saw? Was it something of beauty? Like the white heron she sees pinkened by sunrise, perched one-legged, checking from the corner of its eye a fish leaping a foot out of the water. Or did they close their eyes, nothing left for them to see? Was it on a moonless night, sneaking away from their room, feeling their way up the dirt path, past the bamboo, and finally that thin, crooked cedar that stands atop the cliff, on a moonless night when nothing could be seen, eyes open or not? How many more—than the twenty-three that she knows of—in those seventeen years before she arrived?

She helped to remove many of them from these rocks. Helped carry their bodies along the rough shore, over to the area past the farmers of Nagashima, who removed their hats, rested their hoes and rakes, past the fishermen of Nagashima, the nets bunched at their feet. The bodies were angled into a wheelbarrow and were taken on their final journey to the crematorium.

This morning, she is not here to take away any bodies, only here because she likes the place. This place of death makes her feel so strangely alive. A place to get away, to be alone, and that is very difficult on this island, for her, and even more so for the patients who are wheelchair-bound, blind.

Tucked among the shallow gorges of the rocks, she sees the west coast of Shodo Island, where, a little bit around the corner, in a few short hours, the divers will begin diving. Sometimes, but not as often now, she imagines that she can feel the energy from the divers cutting through the seven miles of the Inland Sea. Like that hot
tsunami
coming from Hiroshima that she felt in August— the August in this country that will never need a year to accompany it.

The sun has trudged its way atop the hill at the eastern edge of the island; a fishing trawler heads home while the large temple bell of Nagashima gongs out the hour. Slow. Slow. Slow. Slow. Slow. Slow.

Several early mornings this week, the rocks have bared, then sunned themselves, building a path to a tiny island across from Nagashima. A large cement
torii
gate stands at the front. Ever since arriving here, she has thought of crossing the one hundred yards to the island. She has stopped, each time wondering if it would be considered an attempt at escape. How could it be? The island is surrounded by the Inland Sea, no land, other than Nagashima, within a mile of it. But the rules are not hers to make or break.